Halakhah su Numeri 8:2

Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach (Me’orei Eish 5:2) and Rav Ovadia Yosef (Yabia Omer, O.C. 3:35, and Yechaveh Da’at 4:38) contend that electric lights, although they meet the halachic definition of fire, differ significantly from the menorah in the Beit Hamikdash (Temple), which Chanukah candles should commemorate.⁹The Ramban (Bemidbar 8:2) and Ba’al Hama’or (Shabbat 9a in Rif’s pages) develop the idea that Chanukah candles commemorate the lights that the Kohanim lit in the Temple. See, however, Teshuvot Tzitz Eliezer (1:20:12), where Rav Eliezer Waldenberg argues that Chanukah candles need not be so similar to the original menorah as to invalidate electric menorahs. We have already cited Rav Waldenberg’s own objections to electric menorahs, due to other reasons. They note that electric lights contain a glowing filament but lack any actual flame, a key element of the lights in the Beit Hamikdash (see Rashi, Bemidbar 8:2). Moreover, conventional candles contain both a wick and a source of fuel. Although wax candles do not correspond precisely to the lights in the Beit Hamikdash (which burned olive oil), they may nevertheless be used on Chanukah because they include the basic structure of a wick and fuel. Incandescent bulbs, by contrast, clearly lack a combustible source of fuel to parallel oil. Rav Ovadia and Rav Moshe Stern (Be’er Moshe, vol. 6 Kuntres Electric 58-59) even question whether the filament parallels a wick.¹⁰Rav Ben-Zion Uzziel (Mishp’tei Uzziel, O.C. 1:7) explains that although the filament becomes hot, it does not actually catch fire as a true wick does. Indeed, Dr. Joel Berman further notes that, from a scientific perspective, candles and electric bulbs generate light in different manners. Regarding candles, a chemical process of oxidation produces light. A filament, on the other hand, produces light through black body radiation, a process that involves no chemical change.